Forgot how much I enjoyed keeping killifish. My australe gold pair are doing spectacularly well. Spawning regularly, eating whatever I put in their tank, and they don't seem to mind having the poliaki female in there with them either.

Australe female

Poliaki female

I collected some eggs from their spawning mop and have them floating in a chinese take-out container. A few look to have eyed up and I am hoping that I can get them to hatch.

Only problem is now I am just wishing I had the space and funds to set-up more tanks for killifish again!

Going to seriously overhaul my fish rack over the next few weeks. I want to put in live plants such as frogbit, water sprite and mayaca in all of my tanks including grow-outs because I want to cut down on the amount of water changes I am doing.

This means I am going to have to install lights over each shelf of tanks. At the moment I am just looking at fluros because they are cheaper to purchase and this rack is going to eventually be torn down once I move my fish downstairs.

I also have to organise my tanks better. I want to have separate shelves for my breeding pairs, groups of adult fish and grow-outs. I hate how my tanks look presently and they are starting to sprawl off the rack again.

Plan is to order IALs online, source some plants locally and get my dad to help me install some lights. I also want to purchase a couple of plastic water drums and age my water for water changes in this. I am wondering if I am causing fluctuations with the water chemistry in the tanks with fry/juveniles when I just do changes with water out of the tap. I have a spare 200 watt heater lying around so I figure why not rig something up.

It's going to be a lot of work, but I think my fish will be happier and healthier in the long run. These are quite sensitive species, particularly when they are fry so I want to try and keep my set-ups as low maintenance and 'hands-off' as possible.

Anyway, for those that read all this, here is a photo of my pair of A. australe pair courting.

They are such active fish compared to my wild bettas and the male is always on the move chasing the female around and trying to convince her to spawn.

The australe are killifish, not bettas. I used to keep both killies and wilds but then I lost nearly all my killies to disease.

The bottom one is the male. They are not a rare species but I think they are exceptionally beautiful. It's a shame killies are not as readily available here in Australia. A new species was recently described that is absolutely stunning.

Was just checking on my killifish eggs that I had collected from the spawning mop. I had been lazy and not bothered to add methylene blue or an airstone to the container which can cause the eggs to fungus.

Much to my surprise, I have five or so tiny fry hatched out! I added in a small amount of microworms to the container but I think they aren't quite big enough for it yet.

Now comes the tricky part of raising them. I have learned with my killifish to take it slow and so I am going to leave them floating in the container for a couple of weeks to avoid causing stress.

I probably have a stack more eggs left in the spawning mop as I haven't been collecting them. Will be awesome if I could build up a colony of these fish.